1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to databases in general, and, in more particular, a mechanism for transforming the format data is stored in to allow seamless integration between business applications.
2. Background Information
There are many instances in which corporate enterprises spend a large amount of resources supporting a particular software application or suite of applications. Oftentimes, such software applications are proprietary and do not provide interfaces that enable other applications to access data stored by the applications. Typically, in order to enhance performance (e.g., through faster operation or new features) the corporate enterprise must continue to purchase new versions of the applications and/or purchase productivity tools from the software vendor who produces the application or a third party that provides such tools.
With the emergence of e-business and the exponential growth of information technology, new techniques and methodologies have been developed to enhance the performance of business applications in a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, marketing, and sales. In most instances, the new techniques and methodologies are implemented using new applications that store data in particular formats that are optimized for use with the applications. Generally, these data formats and architectures are defined in a manner that makes it impractical or impossible to share data between applications. This becomes particularly problematic for those enterprises that have been using a certain application for years, such as a manufacturing processing tool, and have a great deal of data that have been generated by the tool and/or inserted into a database supported by the tool: the new improved tool cannot access the existing data in a reliable or useful manner, and years or even decades of information must be re-entered into the new system. In many cases, this process is envisioned to be so burdensome that the corporate enterprise will decide to not switch over to the new application.